![]() ![]() I loved the way they felt smashed together with urgency, the headlines and illustrations and little boxes of text all adding up to a rush. I read every one I could get my hands on back then- Bitch, Bust, Bikini Kill, all that Riot Grrrrl stuff. It gave me real psychic freedom from performing racial pain for a country that is largely unmoved by it. One of the things I realized early on is that if I drew each of us as paper dolls and did not change the facial expressions to account the emotions in any given scene, the reader would have to hold the emotions that our faces did not. I always loved looking at the way the dolls were posed on their own, and then watching each pose take on different meanings with the change of setting and clothing. But with drawing, that understanding is inherent to the process.ĮR You shared on Instagram that VH1’s “Pop-Up Video” was an inspiration for the design and aesthetic of Good Talk. What are some other unexpected influences on your graphic memoir? No one told me that you have to work and rework that story to let it become the most interesting version of itself. I didn’t know this when I first started writing. MJ I think the movement involved with drawing, of allowing a shape to turn and morph on the page, to become itself instead of what you thought it should be, is great preparation for that moment when you write the story that is perfect in your head but comes out small and flawed and flimsy on the page. Every day of writing this felt like I was trying to find us a bridge to another place, a place we could catch our breaths and grow into the people we want to be instead of the ones this country is trying to turn us into.ĮR I recently came across a piece on LitHub about how drawing makes better writers: “ How Learning to Draw Can Help a Writer to See.” Do you think this is true? The home that once held my body and my son’s body had become, and continues to become, increasingly hostile. Mira JacobIt catalyzed and crystallized it. We spoke again, via email, about how she crafted her unusual book.Įmily Raboteau How did Trump's election change this project? What results is a complex and evolving portrait about the absurdities and realities of growing up as a person of color in a land built on the myth of white supremacy. Jacob presents difficult conversations about race and ethnicity with her young son, Z., and with her own parents (starting from when she was a child), lovers, teachers, and friends. At the time, Jacob was working on developing a graphic essay that had gone viral on Buzzfeed, “ 37 Difficult Questions from my Mixed Race Son,” into a book, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (One World), which was just released with much deserved fanfare. That seems about two millennia ago, though it’s only been two and a half years. I was introduced to writer Mira Jacob through the raconteur essayist Garnette Cadogan, who invited us to do a conversation for LitHub, “ Our Kids, Their Fears, Our President?,” in November, 2016 about how we were discussing the presidential election with our kids.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |